Response to AK and MC Ads
To AK and MC:
We saw your recent half-page newspaper advertisements in the Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle. Hearing your accounts of being victimized by criminals who you mention also misused our site, we are anxious to know that the perpetrators are behind bars. Would you or the advocacy groups who placed the ads please let us know where the police reports were filed? We have been unable thus far to identify police reports matching the crimes you describe. If craigslist was misused, we want to learn more so we can improve our preventative measures. If anyone committing such crimes has not yet been apprehended and prosecuted, we want to do everything in our power to assist the police in making that happen. You can send the information to legal@craigslist.org. We work with law enforcement to bring to justice any criminals foolish enough to incriminate themselves by misusing our site, and want to make sure everything possible has been done in your cases.
craigslist is used by more than 50 million Americans to facilitate billions of interactions each month, and criminal misuse of the site is quite rare. We are dedicated to eliminating it entirely however, and in this regard we have been working for years to ensure that craigslist is very much part of the solution to crimes such as trafficking and exploitation of minors. In November 2008, we issued a Joint Statement with 40 Attorneys General and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, describing an array of measures to prevent misuse of craigslist. In May 2009 we went beyond those measures and implemented manual screening of each adult services ad. Based on the time period mentioned in your newspaper ads, it appears the events you describe may have occurred before manual screening was implemented.
craigslist is one of the few bright spots and success stories in the critical fight against trafficking and child exploitation. We’ve been told as much by experts on the front lines, many of whom we have met with in person, and many of whom have shared helpful suggestions we have incorporated in our approach. Even politicians looking to advance their careers by publicly criticizing us grudgingly admit (when pressed) that we have made giant strides, and that craigslist is virtually alone among advertising venues in vigorously combating exploitation and trafficking.
For example, to our knowledge only craigslist, out of countless venues, takes any of the following measures, let alone all of them:
* educating and encouraging users to report trafficking/exploitation
* prominently featuring anti-trafficking/exploitation resources
* creating specialized victim search interfaces for law enforcement
* actively participating in NCMEC’s cybertipline program
* leading all awareness efforts for the National Trafficking Hotline
* meeting regularly with experts at nonprofits and in law enforcement
* manually reviewing every adult service ad prior to posting
* requiring phone verification for every adult service ad
* implementing the PICS content labeling system
We are not content however, and are committed to making further progress. Specific information about the outrageous misuse of our site you describe in your advertisements will help prevent such crimes in the future.
August 9th, 2010 at 10:15 am
A good try, but do you think these guys will take the bait?
Did your attorneys advise you to post this, or are you already in the process of suing for libel?
Best of luck. Libel suits aren’t easy, but I think you have a case. At least they were stupid enough to publish in the newspaper.
August 9th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Hi Jim,
Have you ever thought of having region specific moderators to help keep Craigslist clean from this kind of misuse?
What are your thoughts on this?
August 9th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Craigslist is a service provided to the community, and the community is given responsibility for policing the service.
The problems with Craigslist are not about Craigslist, they are about the people who use it, and more importantly, about the people out there who ignore the abuses of the service, and of others. Exploitation on Craigslist doesn’t happen because Craigslist lets it, exploitation happens because the readers on the community servers let it happen.
The Terms of Service for the use of Craigslist require that all users monitor the site and flag any ad that violates the terms of service, and also requires people to report crime. That crime happens is not the fault of Craigslist - they can’t possibly monitor every single ad - it is the fault of users who abuse the site by not fulfilling their responsibilites to flag ads.
Perhaps the solution lies in smart programming wherein users are required to have free accounts to use or place ads. I know that goes rather against the program, but it would allow Craigslist to monitor accounts to determine if flagging is happening. It’s a longshot. But its merely an attempt to accommodate the fact that people in America are lazy, and continue to degrade in their ability to take responsibility for the freedoms they have. Craigslist is, in that regard, a lot like Democracy. If we don’t participate in our own governance, it is taken over by those who profit from the responsibility; just as Craigslist is being overrun by scam artists; simply because users let it happen.
Craigslist is a reflection of society, not a contributor to its problems.
August 9th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
I just saw the segment on CNN about the adult ads. Stick to your guns, Craig. Newspapers, Magazines and other websites have never removed any ads for adult service’s. I don’t want to see children sex trafficing, however there will always be bad apples in a bunch. Those individuals should be prosecuted to the fullest, but that is the job for the police not Craig.
August 10th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Clean-up your act Craigs List!!! Or I will not use you anymore. Keep it clean for God’s sake. Why do you have to fall into the $ trap and ruin it for the rest of us? We want a Christian based website or close to it. Not smut or at least try (hard). Thanks
August 10th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
I don’t think the attacks on craigslist are about children at all. They are really part of a relentless attack on prostitution in general. They are just exploiting people’s natural emotional response to the suggestion that children are being injured. The substitution of emotion for reason is what it takes to get people to mindlessly go along with such smears.
You can’t win. No matter how vigorously you police those ads, some will always slip through and that’s all the anti-prostitution groups need to keep up their attack. Whatever you do, it will never be enough. Eventually, you will have to capitulate because, in the eyes of the public, this is about children. Like it or not, to most people, the aggressively promoted vision of one child being sexually abused will always be many times worse than some vague notion of all children growing up in a country where what they’re allowed to say and do is governed by intimidation campaigns waged by moral crusaders acting under the pretense of legality for their own personal gratification.
In case you’re not familiar with the daycare witch hunts of the 80s and 90s, child sex abuse cases, even if based on imaginary evidence, are career builders that can help catapult people into high public office. Even the fact that those cases we’re eventually recognized as a wanton miscarriage of justice did little to dampen the careers of the prosecutors who pursued them. The Attorneys General of 43 states are riding that wave now and they’ve already tasted blood (and they like it).
Sorry for the doom and gloom. Good luck, I’ll be rooting for you.
August 10th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Have you ever thought of having a global category for missing children or wanted fugitives? Just asking because this is one of the few websites that is accepted all over the world. Not sure if this even relates to the subject at hand but it would help with some related issues. Also to create a sidebar on every page showing what children are missing around the area being searched would limit how many the average person would have to see everyday. Just a suggestion.
August 10th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
Sex trafficking existed long before Craigslist.
Before Craigslist, women were forced to work on the streets by their traffickers so if anything, Craigslist makes things a little bit safer for them but it certainly isn’t necessary for the crime.
The real crime that Craigslist is guilty of, is putting the print newspapers out of business.
Have you seen the classifieds in the newspaper lately ?
NEITHER HAVE I
August 11th, 2010 at 10:25 am
If you are victimized on craigslist it really is your own fault. The human element will never be able to be systematically controlled and one should take that into account and always exercise caution. Craigslist merely helps facilitate interactions and they really go above and beyond with their moderation efforts.
August 14th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
To the Washington Post in response to this Article published | 08/07/2010
Sex-trafficking opponents fight Craigslist’s ‘adult services’ ads
Washington Post would do better to concentrate on reporting instead of urging free speech oppression.
The Washington Post would do well to inform itself, to catch up to what the rest of us already know; that online classifieds like Craigslist have taken a huge chunk of revenue out of news papers like theirs and the SF Chronicle. It’s clear to see that in reporting or in this case, repeating on Craigslist, your paper has motivation to not report facts.
Craigslist has taken the profit out of the print presses’ classified sections and that threatens their sustainability. Then media repeaters like CNN, who have traditionally relied print publications to come up with all the facts, have no ability to fill these kinds gaps since they’ve never had to do so before. The best they can do is create media sensation out of themselves and then report on it http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20012671-501465.html and get you to repeat it.
The fact is that the press must have a whipping post and the adult industry has always been that, so now it’s Craigslist by extension. The photos of women the obituary in high heels…short skirts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/08/AR2010080801654.html Sex sells, for every publication.
This leads me to question the credibility of two girls’ stories featured in the paid ad San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/20/MN2K1DHDV9.DTL Upon pain of death they violated Craigslist’s terms of use http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use by saying they were of age and then again by posting for illegal services. Then allowed their stories being cooped by the poverty pimps who’ve paid themselves how much to blame Craigslist, in a ½ page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle? A phone call got a quote of $16,000 for that ad.
And then the repeating that manufactured piece of media is supposed to be an excuse upon which to oppress the rest of our free speech and force adult advertisers out of work? The adults who are supporting families-children?
Media outlets like the Washington Post, as well as politicians already know that adult advertisers don’t cause child abuse, sexual assault or forced child labor.
Craigslist has come a long way in educating themselves and reaching out to community members, like no other classified ever has before, why not follow the new industry’s standard.
Repeating paid ads in the WP to urge politicians to violate everyone’s free speech must be like signing their own death warrant. I want to see reporting on how these groups are funding their free speech. Many of these groups get their funding through various US government agencies http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/fs/2009/121358.htm who have over estimated the actual http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-825
victims to justify over funding these anti trafficking groups. I call on Mr. Eric Holder investigate that and media outlets like the WP should too.
I urge all media outlets to stop sensationalizing sex by any means necessary and stop trying to hold the wrong person(s) responsible because in the mean time, somebody is getting away with a very violent crime.
Maxine Doogan
Erotic Service Providers Union
San Francisco California
8/11/10
August 16th, 2010 at 11:57 am
there is a fortune being made out of prostitution,but not by sex workers,its the rescue industry who benefits the most by all the funding given to it by govt,religious industry and rich multi-national media organisations.
in order to justify their lucrative money making racket,the rescue industry has to create scare stories
August 19th, 2010 at 9:20 am
I was just doing some research on Craiglist to find out what exactly it was. I am delighted that you are taking matters seriously with regards to the illegal and wrong use of web-sites. I wish you will also encourage MSN, Facebook and other Social Networks to post warnings against the use of their web-sites and chats for pornographic exchange or use of descriptive pornographic offerings. Many teenager barely 18 years and younger are being enticed into showing themeselves, exchanging pornographic material, doing abnormal paraphilic behaviour (BDSM, infantilism, zoophilia, etc) these sort of things and - some of the material is quite alarming - I am a parent so it irks me that filters are not put into these places. A whole generation is being corrupted before our own eyes and nothings is being done. There is an Urban Group - FURRY FANDOM - or Furries that because of their lax and open acceptance to anyone, no matter how perverted, has allowed a lot of perverts to burrow and register with them and these people are enticing, and corrupting young minds - making them addicts to pornography - I feel sometimes like a one person army trying to stop this from happening. Our values, morals are going down the toilett and I do not see positive action taking place.
Legal age should be raised so these predators know that they can not continue ruining lives of htese young men and women. I know that many will think that everyhtng starts at home and parents should control it, but I can tell you that trying to stop th einternet form invading your home is like trying to cover teh sun with a finger - Therefore we need for the social networks, the websites to ally tehmeselves to cleaning up the internet, so that our kids are protected from filth. T.
August 23rd, 2010 at 7:33 am
WOW…been using this website for years and NEVER saw any of the ads spoken about in this article….perhaps one should not be “looking”. smiles and resumes her morning coffee routine.
August 26th, 2010 at 8:47 am
Why not make prostition legal? It’s the oldest profession and than you could tax it. Apparently even elected oficials who got caught would agree!
September 3rd, 2010 at 4:38 am
If you go to news.google.com and search for “craigslist”, at the moment you will find a host of articles about how attorneys general across the country, and other groups, are again calling for Craigslist to drop its adult services section.
I read through a couple of articles, and I see a lot of really bad PR statements coming from the CL camp. For example, “Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster claimed that sex trafficking “rarely” occurs on the website.” Or, a few weeks ago, while in Houston, my father had the TV on and a report happened to come up about prostitution on CL. A reporter managed to get Craig Newmark to agree to an interview, but when she asked him about a specific case of prostitution, he didn’t say anything. She asked another question. He remained silent. While he might have been listening to an attorney, that is HORRIBLE public relations. Going back further, to last year, I was listening to Craig being interview on a public radio podcast, and whenever the correspondent asked him about a specific topic (might have had to do with the CL killer–unsure), Craig would say “read the blog”, “read the blog”, “read the blog”. WHAT A DUMBASS. He has a chance for good PR, and he totally blows it.
Craig Newmark is obviously intelligent for having come up with this idea, but he has been bad at responding to these allegations, and the responses are obvious.
What him and thus Buckmaster (CEO) guy should be saying is that the adult services section hosts ads for many PERFECTLY LEGAL services. Offering to strip naked for a client is not illegal. Offering a lap dance is not illegal. Offering a nude massage (or rubdown, where the use of the word massage is prohibited unless licensed) is NOT ILLEGAL. There are plenty of adult activities that are perfectly legal, I don’t heard these guys stressing this.
Also, that it is not craigslist’s job to be the police, and that furthermore Americans have a right to freedom of expression, and craigslist faciliates that.
Finally, and this is more tricky, craigslist should go on the OFFENSIVE and argue that the problem, with regards with traffickign, is the outlawing of prostitution itself. If prostitution were legalized, then victims of trafficking would not have to be afraid of going to the police, at least not for fear of prosecution. They might have different fears, like deportation or harm to their families back home, but that is way beyond the scope of craigslist.
October 25th, 2010 at 7:28 am
It would be nice if you could post a listing for our group, http://www.traffickingandprostitutionservices.com, on your site somewhere prominent.
We provide direct rescue and services to not only sex workerse who want to quit sex work, but also to sex trafficking victims.
I’m sad people want to blame your site for prostitution - that makes as much sense as saying if we get rid of street lights we get rid of street walkers.
I’ve found actually your site has helped us a great deal in finding runaways and trafficking victims - as well as helping us find them back home again. It’s why I know we’d reach that much more if we could have a permanent post of our contact info.
I read that you’ve been court ordered to provide some of the profits back to non-profits which help prostitutes. We’ve been helping rescue prostitutes since 1987 and sure could use not only the ad placement - but any donations you’d like to offer.
We wouldn’t tear up your check like I read one group did. We also don’t take donations and then don’t provide direct services like how some of these groups that do are and then come out and bash your site.
Anyway, your site helps us help them a lot and any more help you want to offer is fine with us.
http://www.sexworkersanoymous.com
http://www.traffickingandprostitutionservices.com
Thanks
Jody